Spring Walks Becoming Town Reunion

May 11, 2014 at 1:19 PM

Betty Anderson (left) leads the way when the tour left Soldier Wesleyan Church.

The DuBois Area Historical Society’s Spring Walk is fast becoming a reunion for the communities where it is held. Forty Society members and guests attended the 6th Annual Spring Walk on Saturday, May 10, in Soldier.

Betty Anderson and Mike Grasso

Siblings Michael Grasso, Betty (Grasso) Anderson, and Angie (Grasso) Siple, served as the presenters and guides for the walk, with plenty of help from current and former Soldier residents in attendance. They brought fossils, photos, and display boards concerning the former thriving mining community for an indoor presentation at Soldier Wesleyan Church. Rev. Kevin Brooks and his congregation volunteered their building as a meeting place for the walk.

Part of the tour admires the old Soldier reservoir.

But it was outdoors where the full scope of the community came into focus. During the walk stops were made at the sites of the former company store, the school, hotels, and churches. The tour also took a turn through the woods to the site of one of the town’s reservoirs and made a stop at the “arches” the former entrance to the mines, left standing despite the strip mining that has taken place since the underground mines closed.

The "Arches", the former entrance to the Soldier mines.

Soldier was once billed as home to the “largest bituminous coal mines in the world,” so famous that a photo of the mine appeared in many turn of the century schoolbooks. The Soldier coal mine, owned by the Bell, Lewis and Yates Coal Mining Company, opened Oct. 1, 1889. It was purchased by the Rochester & Pittsburg Coal & Iron Company, subsidiary of the Jefferson and Clearfield Coal and Iron Company around 1896. Its output for years ranged from 500,000 to 2,000,000 tons of coal per annum. There were also coking plants at Soldier containing over 100 ovens. During 1895, 19,677 tons of coke was produced at Soldier.

The company town that grew up around the mines was called Big Soldier or simply Soldier. Despite being a company town, Soldier was noted for its large number of privately owned stores located off the company property.

Upcoming DuBois Area Historical Society events include:

May 16 – Fundraiser Italian Oven, DuBois, all day. Get a voucher from any board member or print one from the Society’s website: www.http://duboishs.com.